Wallington Hall

One of the central hall panels in Wallington Hall: “In the nineteenth century the Northumbrians show the World what can be done with Iron and Coal”. (The little girl in the foreground is carrying a book on arithmetic!)  William Bell Scott, 1861

Wallington Hall is an 18th-century Palladian-style house, but our reason for visiting it was to take in the covered courtyard. This was roofed over in the 1850s by order of Lady Pauline Trevelyan; she had William Bell Scott (1811-1890) paint a cycle of historical subjects on the receding walls, and she and her friends (including John Ruskin) painted the flower panels inbetween. It’s a wonderfully incongruous space. The rest of the house – perfectly symmetric – is an accumulation of styles and objects acquired over the generations – including yet another Burne-Jones, this time “Pilgrim at the gates of idleness”.  As with Cragside, I would have found it more congenial and interesting with fewer visitors . . . and, indeed, they may have thought the same about me.

“The Romans cause a wall to be built for the protection of the south”, William Bell Scott 1861

But the scent of the lime trees in the grounds was delightful.